Do you want the devil you know?

BN happens to have been in federal government for so long that people tend to automatically assume they have the required leadership.

COMMENT

I’m finding this frequent comment by people rather irksome: “But does Pakatan Rakyat (PR) have leadership? Can it take over the federal government?”

I’m prompted to ask: What do they mean by “leadership”? Is the Barisan Nasional (BN) leadership the kind we want?

I’d take it further: Does BN have leaders? I mean, real leaders?

People tend to forget to look at the states currently being governed by PR. I don’t know much about Kedah and Kelantan, but Selangor and Penang have been doing fine.

I live in Selangor, and as a Penang-born-and-bred, I visit Penang from time to time. The Auditor-General has commended the PR government of Penang for its financial management and monitoring system for three consecutive years – 2008, 2009 and 2010.

The Auditor-General has also commended the PR government of Selangor for its “very good” performance in 2010 of reducing public debt and loan repayment arrears. And from 2009 to 2010, its consolidated revenue also increased by 20.2%.

Leadership must have something to do with it, must it not?

As for BN, people think it has leadership because it is a perception that has been ingrained in them for more than five decades. BN happens to have been in federal government for so long that people tend to automatically assume they have the required leadership.

But look at BN’s leaders today. Which of them are really good? Quite a few have been making stupid statements, that’s for sure. And the statements have been getting worse and worse.

Look at Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein’s response to a question on why during the Bersih 3.0 rally, the police were confiscating memory cards from the cameras of press photographers and members of the public. “I don’t know,” he said. “This is the standard operating procedure of the police.”

And how about MCA president Chua Soi Lek blaming Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim for Ng Yen Yen’s recourse to Australian permanent residence? He said it was because of Anwar’s “restrictive” policies while he was Education Minister that compelled non-Malays like Tourism Minister Ng to seek PR status abroad in the 1990s for the sake of their children’s education. Never mind that Anwar was not the Education Minister then, that it was actually Sulaiman Daud.

Keeping faith with the devil?

Another comment I find irksome is “Better the devil you know than the angel you don’t” – courtesy of ex-prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad recently.

He was not saying something new; this had been bandied about for the last couple of years – by people trying to advocate that even though BN is a “devil”, it is safer to keep BN in power than to opt for a new government and potential uncertainty.

What’s new is that Mahathir has now admitted that BN is indeed a “devil”. Unwittingly, I suppose.

Well, should we keep faith with the devil we know?

The devil we know has not brought us a single institutional reform yet despite Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak’s numerous pledges.

Just to quote one example, why hasn’t Article 121 of the Federal Constitution been restored so as to return real independence to the judiciary? Without that, the judiciary is still answerable to Parliament, which was not the original intent of our founding fathers, who recognised the need for the separation of powers between the Executive (Government), the Legislative (Parliament) and the Judiciary.

Neither has the devil we know done away with repressive laws like the Internal Security Act (ISA) and the Sedition Act. It has merely replaced the ISA with the Security Offences (Special Measures) Act, and is proposing to replace the Sedition Act with the musical-sounding National Harmony Act.

In fact, the devil we know has restricted our democratic space by first enacting the Peaceful Assembly Act and then giving us the new amendment to the Evidence Act called 114A.

This amendment presumes the accused guilty and places the onus on him/her to prove his/her innocence. It goes against the principle of natural justice. Under this amendment, someone could borrow your computer to post a seditious comment on some blog or website and you could be held responsible for that comment.

You may not even be aware of that posting but you’d have to produce witnesses to testify that you were not at your computer when the posting was done. See how ridiculous it is?

Furthermore, the devil we know has demonstrated that it has different sets of laws for different sets of people. A 19-year-old was arrested for baring his buttocks over photographs of Najib and his wife, Rosmah Mansor, while the incidents of BN supporters burning photographs of Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng and urinating on the posters of Kelantan Menteri Besar Nik Aziz and DAP leader Lim Kit Siang have been ignored by the authorities.

And a 19-year-old girl who surrendered herself to the police for having stepped on the photographs of Najib and Rosmah got handcuffed like a criminal. But if you were to look at photographs of ex-menteri besar Khir Toyo and ex-minister Ling Liong Sik when they were arrested – one for land fraud, and the other for cheating the Government – you’d see that neither of them was handcuffed

It looks like on the one hand, we are told we are 1Malaysia, but on the other, there are these double standard.

The devil we know has also been spending public funds to the tune of RM5.77 billion for the political purpose of buying our hearts – and votes.

And in other ways as well. Only recently, Najib, while attending the launch of the Sultan Ahmad Shah Environmental Trust, surprised everyone there by announcing that the government would donate to it one million ringgit. Just like that – one million ringgit of the people’s money, given away at a glitzy launch party. Who gave him the permission to give away our money?

Roaring national debt

Meanwhile, our national debt keeps increasing at an alarming rate.

According to finance expert Teh Chi-Chang, in his book Umno-nomics: The Dark Side of the Budget, “Our national debt now stands at nearly 54% of total national income or GDP …”.

This, he adds, is just one per cent below the 55% debt ceiling set by “our more prudent forefathers” in the Loan (Local) Act 1959 and the Government Funding Act 1983. The way Najib keeps spending, we might soon go through the ceiling.

The devil we know hijacked Merdeka Day this year and turned it into BN’s own day of celebrations and election campaigning, culminating in the setting of a “world record” in the number of tweets in an hour! How that would benefit the country only a twit would know.

The devil we know is currently drawing up a new curriculum for the teaching of History in schools that will supposedly instil “patriotism” in our students. What that probably means is that history being told by the victors about the achievements of the victors will be indoctrinated in the minds of our young.

And our young will be captive because History has been made a must-pass subject at SPM starting next year.

So, what do you think? Better the devil we know, or the idea of a two-coalition system turning into reality that might convince sceptics that it is workable – and that it is the better option?

Even someone from the MCA, which is part of the ruling coalition, has come out to suggest that the devil we know has dark secrets to hide.

Lee Hwa Beng, writing in his book PKFZ: A Nation’s Trust Betrayed, points out that if it had not been for the outcome of the 2008 general election, at which BN lost its two-thirds majority and four states plus Kelantan, “we would never have known what happened in [the] PKFZ [scandal]”.

He adds, encouragingly, “If a repeat of March 2008 occurs at the 13th general election, which are due very soon, who knows what other truths could be revealed.”

For the sake of a better Malaysia , would you not want more truths to be revealed?

I put it to Malaysian, UMNO/BN today is a Devil they STILL DON’T KNOW..

If you think about it. Do they know the extend of which the electoral roll is corrupted? Do they know what is the status of illegal immigration in Sabah? Do they know the full extend of Taib’s corruption and wealth? Do they know the billions lost in Defense contracts? What even crime statistic and reliability of the judicial system even? Do they even know how poor our education system is now that the colleges have fallen out of the ranking of several indicators? The list goes on..

We recognise UMNO/BN devil but does not mean we truly know because the fact the fact of the matter is that UMNO/BN don’t even know what kind of devil they are themselves – why can’t they name an MB for Selangor or Kedah if they take over? Why are they harping on negative politics when it obviously isn’t working? Why can’t Najib even make up his mind about an election date?

UMNO/BN is a devil who don’t know who they are themselves and so we certaintly cannot assume we do…

The devils are in disguised as angels…looking for votes from two fronts….devil worshipers and angels lovers.
It takes more than being a devil to be that way.
It’s con-men …rouges and thieves…worker of arts…with total hypocrisy and very thick skin face to succeed.
Success they achieved with the master of that art…teaching all.
It’s umno B party that is pure devilish and we all know who that founder and leader is.
Out come the Angel from jail he put in…and since then…since 12th GE…millions of Malaysians have been released from the spell.

///Last month, secretly recorded video of Romney at a May fundraiser showed the Republican candidate saying 47% of Americans will vote for President Barack Obama “no matter what.”

“There are 47% who are with him, who are dependent on government, who believe that, that they are victims, who believe that government has the responsibility to care for them. Who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing.”///–http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/04/romney-on-47-comments-i-was-completely-wrong/?hpt=hp_t2

That description would be applicable to Malaysia when the figure of 47% is amended to read 55%.

The fact is that the so-called leaders running the country have for decades found a magic formula to enrich themselves based on the ignorance and short memory of most Malaysians.
Added to these are the laws like the OSA which further enhance this ignorance.
Another factor that contributed to all this ignorance is the MSM which is there to tilt the playing field further in their favour.
So, judging from the many factors above, all this corruption, scams, cheating and lying are planned.
So, for decades, Malaysians have been their sacrificial lamb!!!